Paul Stonehill

Nick Subbotin sent me a Russian-language article through the RUFORS mailing List. It was published in Komsomol’skaya Prvada newspaper on 5-31-02.

Aleksandr Plaksin is a military geophysicist. He is an interesting individual in Soviet UFO history; he played a prominent role in the secret research conducted by the Soviet military.

The new book about Russian Ufology, I co-authored with Philip Mantle, contains more information about Plaksin and the Soviet UFO research programs.

In his article Plaksin "reveals" several interesting developments:

1. Many recent achievements of the American military-industrial complex have been generated in the labs dedicated to the research of paranormal phenomena.

2. ‘Aliens’ have nothing to do with American advanced technology (i.e., Stealth).

3. In his 15 years of UFO research A. Plaksin had never obtained direct proof that there are alien civilizations active on our planet.

4. Americans have researched UFOs since 1954 (U.S. Air Force), and since 1974 they have operated a secret scientific research center to study anomalous phenomena and UFOs through the use of a special Earth-based station. Hence, they (the Americans) were able to create a superweapon. (A. Plaksin goes into scary details, but basically his aim is to denigrate American HAARP, future U.S. policies, etc.)

5. A. Plaksin describes the creation of the Soviet program(s) to study the anomalous phenomena from 1978 on. Good stuff; we have gone into great detail in our book to describe such programs, and have more information. But A. Plaksin was definitely one of the key people, albeit, not the top brass.

6. A. Plaksin goes into fascinating details; the information after all, came from Soviet military branches, the Navy, the border guards, anti-aircraft units, etc. Some of such cases I described in The Soviet UFO Files (1998).

I was glad to find in his interview in Komsomol’skaya Pravda fascinating details of a sighting from the Borisoglebsk airfield (the immobile black cloud). The area itself is very interesting, and in our book, we dedicated some pages to the strange goings-on there; the "cloud", too, is of great interest; there have been other very strange "clouds" over the former USSR and Russia.

7. A. Plaksin mentions the infamous and very dangerous 1982 case (and gives the correct date; Mr. Sokolov who has changed his story repeatedly, ought to be ashamed. It was the 4th of October, not the 5th; and nothing but UFO almost triggered a nuclear war).

8. A. Plaksin states that there were no UFO crash in Kazakhstan in 1978; no secret storage for UFO fragments in Mitische (Moscow area), no supersecret storage in Novaya Zemlya..

Again, we should listen to him, and compare his information to that provided by such respectable former Soviet military officers as Gherman Kolchin, Lev Ovsicher, and others. Messers Gershtein, Subbotin, Chernobrov should also be heard, for their research skills are diverse and vast.

9. A. Plaksin is of the opinion that the unidentified objects ("20 percent", acc. to him) are of physical origin that is still in known to us. Our laws of physics cannot explain such objects. He mentions two fascinating episodes (1977 and 1981).

10. Although A. Plaksin states that most likely there are no aliens on Earth, he also mentions that because of military secrecy he cannot reveal everything he knows.

I recently discussed A. Plaksin in a TV interview. Obviously, he is revealing more information, piecemeal. There is more to be learned from him, I hope, in the future. But again, he was but one of the players.

Paul Stonehill

Amazing Soviet-Era UFO Sightings In & Over Water Bodies Pine Gap Base: World Context (Area 51 of Australia)